Teaching English as A Foreign Language DOCX

Title	Teaching English as A Foreign Language
Pages	23
File Size	139.1 KB
File Type	DOCX
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1. A Brief history of Languange Teaching Changes in language teaching methods, throughout history have reflected recognition of changes in the kind of proficiency learners need, such as a move toward oral proficiency rather than reading comprehension as the goal of language study; they have also reflected changes in theories of the nature of language and of language learning. Kelly (1969) and Howatt (1984) have demonstrated that many current issues in language teaching are not particularly new. It has been estimated that some sixty percent of today's world population is multilingual. It is fair, then, to say that throughout history foreign language learning has always been an important practical concern. Whereas today English is the world's most widely studied foreign language, five hundred years ago it was Latin, for it was the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and government in the Western world. In the six-teenth century, however, French, Italian and English gained in importance as a result of political changes in Europe, and Latin gradually became displaced as a language of spoken and written communnication. By the nineteenth century, this approach based on the study of Latin had become the standard way of studying foreign language in schools. A typical textbook in the mid- nineteenth century thus consisted of chapters or lesson organized around grammar points. Each grammar point was listed, rules on its use were explained, and it was illustrated by sample sentences. This approach to foreign language teaching became known as the Grammar-Translation Method. The Grammar-Translation Method The principal charcteristics of the Grammar-Translation Method were these: The goal of foreign language study is to learn a language in order to read its literature or in order to benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign-language study, reading and writing are the major focus.Vocabulary selection is based solely on the reading texts used, and words are taught bilingual word list, dictionary study, and memorization, the sentence is the basic unit of teaching and language practice, accuracy is emphasized, grammar is taught deductively, the student's native language is the medium of instruction. Language teaching innovations in the nineteenth century The Frenchma C. Marcel (1793-1896) referred to child language learning as a model for language teaching, emphasized the importance of meaning in learning, proposed that reading be taught before other skills, and tried to locate language teaching within a broader educational framework. Teacher and linguists began to write about the need for new approaches to language teaching, and through their pamphlets, books, speeches, and article, the foundation for more...